Friday, March 9, 2012

Super Tuesday

Our texts for this Sunday are Isaiah 5:1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (which we won't read in worship but is worth reading) and Mark 11:27-33, 12:1-12. Read these passages here, and I would also highly recommend that you read the full account of things that happened on the Tuesday of Holy Week as we continue our day-by-day journey--Mark 11:20-33, Mark 12, and Mark 13, which can be read here.

We may have just completed Super Tuesday in the political world this week, when Presidential primaries took place across multiple states, but if you want to talk about a truly Super Tuesday, let's talk about the Tuesday of Holy Week. Mark devotes 115 verses to the events of that fateful Tuesday Jesus spent teaching in the Temple, making it the day that gets the most attention in all of his Holy Week account (the next two longest, Thursday and Friday, are the days of Jesus' arrest and crucifixion that you would think should get most attention; these two days only get 60 and 47 verses devoted to them, respectively--combined, they do not take up as much space as Tuesday!) and, indeed, in all of his gospel--Tuesday's events make up 10% of the verses in this book.

Why?

If you read the events of Tuesday from start to finish, and you will see that most of this time--Jesus' last day of teaching in the Temple, of teaching publicly PERIOD--is devoted to questions and stories about two of the topics on which Jesus taught most often--two of the topics that still take up a large amount of space and time in our lives: Money and Power. Yikes. Jesus gets questioned about his authority and abilities, his jurisdiction amidst the mighty Temple authorities to make the claims and do thing things he is claiming and doing. Jesus gets grilled about taxes, about the magisterial beauty of the Temple complex, and points out a woman giving two copper coins as the one God honors. Jesus speaks of the day when the Son of Man will come to reign in full and set things right.

Read through the events of Tuesday if you can, start to finish--all 115 verses (and again, you can read them here): why do you think Jesus focused so heavily on these issues of money and power? And why do you think Mark gave such extended, careful treatment to this day and these topics?